How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization by Franklin Foer (sites to read books for free txt) 📗

Alan would tell me to turn o¤ my tape recorder and put down my pen. But, this time, he didn’t. He shifted his glass of Coke to the side. “First, this whole racist thing is bullshit. They’re nationalists. There are blacks in Combat 18. . . . That’s what I mean about this whole racist thing: It’s bullshit. If someone comes here [to England] like Kojak,” a black Chelsea hooligan, “he con-HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS THE SENTIMENTAL HOOLIGAN

siders himself English. He talks with an English accent.

He says, ‘I’m brought up here. I’m English. I don’t give a toss if my parents came from the West Indies.’ He’ll fight for anything English. And he’s in Combat 18, which is right wing. It’s not racist right wing. It’s nationalist right wing.” He was adamant about this point.

“And what about the Jews? What about the Yids at Tottenham? Does that bother you?”

“Nobody bothers me. They make jokes, but I joke about being Jewish myself.”

While he spoke, I thought of the documentary I had seen the night before: the image of Chelsea hooligans sending postcards from Auschwitz to an anti-fascist activist back in England: “Wish you were here so that you could see me pissing on your mother’s bones.”

V.

The new economy may not have survived the nineties, but it left behind a new profession: the consultant.

Every industry has them. Why should hooliganism be any di¤erent? While Alan doesn’t fight regularly, he and the other semiretired Chelsea hooligans advise and mentor a group of teens that calls itself the Youth Firm.

“We help them plan. And when it goes o¤, we stay back with a map and mobile phone.” The old hooligans keep a hand in the youngsters’ operation, because they’re loath to give up all the pleasures of battle—and filled with nostalgia for their own youths. They also feel a sense of obligation to the institution that has nurtured them for so long. “We feel a certain responsibility to the young guys,” Alan told me. “We want them to succeed.

They’re Chelsea. And we have experience that can be helpful to them.”

Like a college alumni association, the semiretired hooligans make a point of sticking together. They stay in touch through a message board, where they discuss the Youth Firm, exchange war stories and opinions about their beloved club. Not surprisingly, for a group that longs for the past, a large number of their posts concern their portrayal in the memoirs published by their fellow hooligans. They’re especially sensitive to the depictions of Chelsea in the books written by gangs from rival clubs. Responding to a memoir by a Hull City hooligan, a fellow with the handle “monkeyhanger” dismisses the bravura of the book’s authors: “[B]unch ov shity arse we took over there town, they stayed in there little pub the silver cod where were they were safe . . . as for the book we’ll say no more. toilet paper springs to mind.”

After reading a West Ham United memoir, one

respondent inveighs, “Pure Fiction! The Only Way They’ll Be Doin Chelsea.”

When the Russian-Jewish oil baron Roman

Abramovich bought Chelsea, I jumped online to gauge reactions on their message board—and to see if Garrison would weigh in. The board makes a point of declaring, “Welcome to the Chelsea Hooligan Message Board, This Board is Not Here for the Purpose of Organizing Violence or Racist Comment.” Needless to say, this warning doesn’t exactly deter the anti-Semitism.

Almost immediately after the Abramovich purchase, a HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS THE SENTIMENTAL HOOLIGAN

guy named West Ken Ken moaned, “I like the money but the star of david will be flying down the [Stamford]

bridge soon.” The title of his post is, “Not much said about Roman being a yid.” A few scattered comments endorsed West Ken Ken’s sentiments. Considering some of the attacks on Tottenham that come from his mouth, it is somewhat surprising that Garrison should be sensitive to West Ken Ken’s burst of Jew hating. But he is. Garrison appeared on the board and presented West Ken Ken with a stern, pedantic reprimand: “Being a Yeed means you support that shit from [Tottenham].

Totally di¤erent form [ sic] being a Jew, you know the ones that kick the shit out of Muslims.” It’s a brilliant response. He invokes the idea of Muskeljudentum, of the ass-kicking Israeli, to defend his people on a hooligan’s own terms. And the only reply to Garrison that can be mustered is, “Yes, I forgot you are one of the chosen race.”

How much violence does Alan still cause? Alan says he has launched a second career as a soldier of fortune, working for a German company that hires out mercenaries. He mentioned his work in Croatia and Kosovo.

On his last trip to the Balkans, he had told his wife that he was just going to train soldiers, not to fight. “She thought I was too old and out of shape to be doing this anymore.” But when he returned, he and his wife were sitting at home, flipping channels. They came across a documentary on the Kosovo war. The opening scene showed Alan in mid-battle. “She wasn’t too pleased with me that evening.” Those days of fighting are probably all in the past now. But Alan claims that he hasn’t fully retired from hooliganism. About four times a year, usually after games against Tottenham, he says that he goes out and throws a few punches. I wasn’t sure whether to believe him. The best way to judge, I thought, would be to watch him in his natural habitat. I wanted to see how close he was to the active hooligans.

On game day, I found Alan and his friends at a bar in the second story of a shopping mall not far from Stamford Bridge. Alan drank a Coke and hovered over a table. He introduced me to his best friend Angus, and reminded me of his appearances in his book.

Angus had brought along his twenty-something daughter. The three of them laughed at dirty jokes that Angus received via text